The Architecture of Architectural Institutes

If we understand architecture in terms of its aesthetic value, then one can say that no Architectural college in the city of Mumbai has any architectural value.

I have visited almost 7 out of the 11 architectural colleges of the city and found that they do not even suffice the spatial requirements of the course, forget the visual ones. Institutes seem to be crumbling under the pressure of accommodating more and more students imposed upon them by the council. However, we were producing almost 4000 architects per year till the last year nationally, the number shall soon rise by double in the next two years. Still, this shall not suffice the need for architects in the country. It is projected that we need about a lakh architects to comprehend the kind of development the nation is going through. Amongst those who pass out, we can clearly rule out 50% graduates who either don't end up practicing architecture or pick up an alternative stream of engagement.

Given these logistics, it is crucial that we have a a fair number of architects who can collectively give an cohesive architectural direction to the country. The aestheticization of this production begins from the environment they are themselves trained in. If we are to discuss the architectural production in the future with this premise in mind, the physical output of the profession is questionable. 

A rough breezing survey of the architectural institutes in the city of Mumbai will show how uninspiring spaces they are. Inspite of being the oldest architectural college of India in the city - the J J college has not produced any strong responses to its site in the recent times. The building is an old introvert heritage which manages to fetch huge amounts of grant from the Government (recently it was offered a sum of 5 crore rupees) for its developmental and other activities. The campus is fascinating, but reasonably dead. Other colleges do not enjoy such huge grants, still, a college like Academy of Architecture has been struggling with its image. The history of the institute has been interesting with the land transforming from a silk mill to a modern building. However, the internal planning of the building is absolutely orthodox which does not allow any flexibility of activities pertaining to the architecture course. The institute is unable to decide its stance over more intake or better education. But it is negotiating this dilemma through the projection of seductive images of its future make-over and extension.

The Indian Education Society in Bandra is a building block worked out in plan and extruded over 7 floors. It has dead wells (courtyards) that are fairly out of proportion within its layout. Hiray college of architecture was almost deserted when I last visited it a few years ago. It did not have any formal spaced out entrance and felt like a municipal hospital. Rizvi college fortunately had a campus but its space did not evoke any kind of pleasant response. Kamla Raheja (in Vile Parle) has a strong introvert planning which looks over to its own landscaped mound. It has huge hollowed spaces which the faculties use in all possible ways. But it has to be noted that the architectural quality of the building may not have any effect in the making of an architecture graduate. 

Campuses in New Bombay enjoy a good expanse of land, but buildings on the campus seem to be planned in a childish way. D Y Patil college has passive landscaped patches and its Architecture block is very glocal in character. It is a cross between a mall and a municipal office. I have not really seen Bhartiaya Vidyapeeth, so I may not be able to comment on that.

Amongst the recently opened colleges - Balwant Seth COA is just a floor of the building dedicated to the course. It is thus, fairly an interior experience to be in the college. I haven't visited Asmita or LS Raheja.

It is a paradox that buildings that produce architects are themselves not architecturally rich (according to me). And I have already specified that I am only trying to look at the physical being and environments of the buildings. It's appalling!

On Cartoons

Tom & jerry / rat race

Road Runner / 

Jungle book / Animals

Popeye / strong, spinach

Donald Duck / Impatience

Duck Tales / miserliness

Shinchan / Celebrating brathood

(i have to elaborate the idea of cartoons here)

Roland Barthes might be useful here!

Blind Sound

Since the past two months, I have been observing two blind beggars on the railway footover bridge/s in Goregaon. Both of them play musical instruments.

The first one plays the bulbul tarang. I don't know where he got it from...probably it was a rejected piece from someone's house or from his own house, or may be its an age old hierloom from his family back home - I absolutely don't know. What I know for sure is that he has no clue of what he is doing to it / with it! He produces sound, not music. The bulbul tarang is thoroughly abused (like the beggar) - its buttons are eroded, strings are lost, case is broken and the feather through which he strikes the strings has lost shape. He strikes each of the remaining buttons and strings continuously multiple times trying hard to make a tune! Whenever I pass by this man, I try to identify what raag might be just possible from the remaining buttons on his instrument! It's rather funny - but what fascinates me is what he can still do with the instrument possibly! But he continuously keeps on playing it, playing it, playing it...

On the other hand, the other blind man plays the dholak. His dholak is intact - definitely seems someone gifted him. Neat. It has a fairly good naad. He always tries and sings with the random beats he produces! Although all songs (kirtans) he sings seem familiar, he just alters their rhythms to suit his silly musical beats! He hits the dholak with a certain amount of uninterest. Probably he just heard John Cage and was absolutely inspired by him.

Both these men compel me to wonder if this is how the first people who engaged with these instruments in the history of civilization behaved! They interact with the instrument as the nomads in the film Gods must be Crazy - as if somebody flying in the air dropped these magnificent musical instruments in their lap which they fiddle with non-visually (by virtue of them being blind) to produce random sound. What aesthetic of sound do the blind understand or create? Do they like to just move hands on it? Do they like to engage with the instrument purely because it allows them that tactile sensation? I am sure one can beg without the formality of playing an instrument.

Further, I kept relating it to the idea of a 'practice'. If practice is about perfecting something, then how are these  people not able to even strike one harmonious chord yet in their engagement? Or is our sense of harmony and aesthetic of sound structured by the classical rules of music? I keep trying to like the 'blind' music they create, but I have yet not been able to come to terms with it.

Finally, I am fascinate with this interesting condition of 'blind sound' and where these blind men go with their timeless exploration of the instruments - playing for the world that remains their audience (whom neither they see, who neither listen them back)!

(I haven't taken their photographs thinking that it will be too sadist to take photographs of blind men)

Untitled

In support of my "technology" blogpost earlier, I want to present how librarians at Academy of Architecture handle or look at books. Here is a newly ordered-for book "Atlas of Novel Tectonics". A lovely black book with rounded corners. It has pages which are somewhat handmade type. 

Look at how carelessly the bar-code sticker has been stuck, hiding the name of the book. Inside, in the first page, the tape sticking the bar-code is folded, crooked and everything that goes contrary to the care that the book maker must have taken while making the book. The stamp and the handwriting that decorates the book add to the irritation I go through every time I take this book in my hand.

Our people personify the saying "Kaala Akshar Bhains Barabar" ( काला अक्षर भैंस बराबर). And this gets termed, quite simplistically as "Indian Culture". 

Answer sheets

Correcting examination papers is like solving the same question paper 40 times (the number of students you have). It is like improvising on every answer each time and evaluating yourself till the last paper. Like how a musician would keep doing till he could sustain the speed. Like music, it has its own highs and lows - a point where you suddenly start writing "YES" or "NO!" on the sheets of students! Its hallucinating - since it takes you back to the exam hall. If you know the students, it feels that they are speaking off the answers to you! In the mind, you keep nudging - "no, just a bit more, a bit less"...It makes you do aha if all what is expected is there...a strange kind of confidence that arises in you. Checking a well written / well answered paper is delightful, since it reassures you of your knowledge, that you shared with the students.

And there are mercies with borderline cases, where you question your own morals, but give in to an assumed larger interest of the time of the student, hoping that eventually all will be well. No one goes beyond, to check what ever happened to the border line cases. In the pragmatics of the world, all pass. They make their means, sometimes, even without the (academic) examinations.

And with cases of either extreme, you end up feeling disgusted or silly and just end it with a shrug. How do you build up that reasonable amount of interest such that a ward is just able to manage and pass...it's not that difficult.

But sometimes, (since I am so much into reading and research at this point of time), I get into unnecessary and unrequired semantics of language, which I myself reconsider and reevaluate again....

Courses & Course Structures

I see that more and more people are wanting to design semester long or year long "courses" to teach architectural subjects. Courses can be meticulously drafted with a lecture-wise and topic-wise schedule with reading lists and tasks or loosely structured giving a broad idea of what would the faculty want to cover. In designing a course, the tutor assumes an "ideal" student in mind. This ideal student would read all the essays for the course on time, prepare for all lectures and work out all assignments in time. The course would keep on reeling throughout the term where the faculty would keep imparting data/knowledge to the entire class at a time. There is a certain generalization of the intellect of the entire class. This generalized body is the ideal student, not necessarily the average student. It could vary depending on the ego of the faculty.

Courses help build faculties a good amount of research material and stray questions that could build up papers for argument. Generally, such is the agenda in the graduate courses designed abroad. The making of courses is quite a graduate study idea. I am not sure if the same works in the undergraduate field where students are still grappling with basic ways of working and thinking. In preparing a course, the reading list is imposed on all those who might not be inclined towards such study. These students would least contribute to the discourse. Courses ideally are product oriented, unless the faculty is aware enough to understand it as a process. 

While choosing post graduate courses, students are aware what they would possibly want to invest more of their time with. Hence, the idea of a course makes a lot of sense then. Courses in graduate studies not only help the researcher faculty, but also the student the privilege to access the researcher. However, at the undergraduate level, all of this could be so vague for the student that although the faculty might be able to put any kind of information generated in the studio in some perspective, the student has large chances of being on the flip side. 

But courses help structuring knowledge. They must be used to open up fields of inquiries. Courses could be broad enough to suit each one's interests. Ofcourse, it largely depends on the tutor how he/she conducts the course. Passive interactions never help, unless you have a great set of students. But why am i writing all this? Because I want to get out a lot of garbage out of my head. I have been somehow strongly thinking that course modules are being "tested" on students here, improvised and applied to "better" places thereof. I may be horribly wrong here, but as I said, this is just to remove all the junky debate that I have been having in my head since some time now. There is so much ambiguity in the course structures itself that I have been seeing (since one could interpret all of it in so many ways and do it in so many different types) that I have come to believe that the focus is not that the student gains, but the focus is pointed inward to the faculty.

Why do I think all this? I have become quite suspicious of things around me...May be it's all because of the political games that intelligent people keep on playing all the time. It's better to be aware than feel bad later! Atleast the impact of shock is lesser...

Basic Design Jury at AOA 2011

I was called for the external jury for the Basic Design work of the aided wing of AOA today. I have never evaluated Basic Design work earlier. I have never taught Basic Design before. I never felt there was any thing to teach in BD. Anything you do in BD is an exploration. So what do you actually critique? The projects that have been going on in AOA since ages are the Line Dot Curve or the Draw a simple machine-sketch-pattern-3D. None of the faculties ever explain the students what the purpose of that exercise is. I softly complained (during a core meeting) about the same  project we did 8 years ago (in our first year) to one of the senior faculties who taught us BD (ofcourse now, after that I've graduated, and being in a stronger position to pose a question to him). He cleverly escaped the question by answering that "you were not supposed to know the purpose then"! It's a completely escapist technique he used then - I refuted. But then I chose to not pinch him enough. They themselves were not sure what they wanted to impart then! They still don't know. If they knew, they would show us Escher, they would show us Renaissance paintings, they would show us what is composition, they would show us what is balance in composition, they would bring in art theorists, visual communicators -  they did not do any of this. They feel as architects they are too high to call people from these streams.

Well, I am not talking about the present BD team. I am talking about a team which taught us. And conveniently, when I asked this grey-head for answers, he tried to ask me who was the faculty team then. Basically he wanted to put all the unclarity of the course on the other members of the team. The hypocrisy with which the oldies operate in our college is commendable. No one questions them what they teach - what they say is a dictum. Very conveniently, they paint a completely floral picture to the higher authorities of what they are doing. That is only because they are able to theorize the entire process. The students struggle in the hindsight. They do not know what to speak! They cannot justify their thought processes. The answers you get are: "I did so because the faculty told me to do so..." On the other hand, the oldies boast about themselves and put down others blatantly (there is to comparison to the effrontery) say that they have "30 years of experience". The fact is that in the span of thirty years, they haven't developed their minds at all as teachers - or else, why do you see the same exercises being repeated for decades to come? The ego of a teacher must never allow repetition of any project that they did with students in their history.

New experiments face severe criticism and loss of a number of interesting faculty. Perhaps I have been too harsh with my comments on them above, but I am frustrated over the fact that I had nothing to carry back home after spending a good 12 hours with 20 students today! It was almost a formality to comment on each project which almost had very little content, which did not even push their imagination further with a plethora of things that surround them! No references, no criticality, no theorization - and this is the result of the kind of exercises that we as faculty develop for students. I do not blame the students at all. It is the intellect that drives the students. There has been no drive. You could see 65 excellent minds being wasted only because a certain senior faculty decides their fate, a faculty that is stuck to a time period 30 years back in history.

How can students allow this? Students have to rise up against this! They have to make us realize how much more we can do! The whole world is open to them - they can listen to lectures, talks on the internet, books are available, library is loaded, references and friends are around, art galleries are all open - when will they engage with all this? When will the ask intelligent questions to the faculty? I could detail out problems with each projects along with their merits. May be I could do it later. But the key to such processes is the amount of time to spend with a particular project. There need to be intensive form building exercises in Academy - they never teach you how to evolve form - and hence you have Hafeez Contractors. Students love to make forms, they crave to do interesting looking objects - why not dedicate one project on form building? It's only when the enter the practice that they meet "design-hungry" people who push them to give "interesting" objects.  So we have forms that have no meaning. Had we engaged with a meaning generation - form based exercise, we would have a lot of interesting stuff around.

But, all that can go on.

I shall upload some pictures - the only activity that kept us busy apart from listening to similar sounding explanations that we got from students. They all were highly skilled, talented and had a lot of potential.

Arguments on Technology

Can this aversion for neatness or organization (being organized) be attributed to the advent of computer technology?

The first thing perhaps my father taught me was to be neat. The first thing he would do when he got a new book was to cover it in a nice brown paper. He would bring in stock, rolls of brown paper, plastic coated sheets sometimes, and neatly cut it to size with a cutter. Cutters would be brought in stock, so that they are replaced once they lost their sharpness. Bad cuts would not work and techniques of cutting was to be learnt through practice. He passed this value to us. He would not allow corners of any of our textbooks or note books to be folded. He would never like papers torn incorrectly. After covering a book, it had to form crisp, pointed corners - no misaligned corners. The covers had to be tight.

On the other hand, he would never allow us to use a pen on a book (text book/printed text), and as far as possible, not even allow pencil marks on the books. Books were to remain fresh till they escaped your life. This, I think was impressioned into our personalities. We would never be allowed to wear un-ironed clothes. the trousers would never have more than one crease. The collars had to be stiff. The hair had to be combed straight....

We grew up with these values. And such values create an immense trouble when I see someone casual about all such things. In some ways, learning architecture or being an architect has amplified this distress. I can not stand misaligned sheets, badly torn papers, ill formatted drawings, crumpled tracings, dirtied and smudged sheets, folded rolls, corners of sheets dissolving due to glue tapes....

What I essentially want to say is that it wasn't architecture that taught me to be crisp, it was my basic family values. You don't find many people following such culture these days. I wonder if it is because there is a software / soft-ness to all these activities. Till the year 2000, we almost dealt largely with physical communication devices. Computer largely caught up only after 2000. I remember, it was only in 2001 that Information Technology was introduced as a vocational subject in the colleges. Today, there is a software for every kind of activity that you once did physically: remember photo albums? the old ones with black tinted papers where one would have to stick each photo carefully, or insert them into their photo holders. Or take for example  writing, where if you had to write, you would carefully select paper, depending on whether you are going to use a ball pen or an ink pen....Today, you have a software to type - where everything is flat. You have a photo album maker, where you just 'upload'. There is no sense of 'care' that goes into it. Unlike the album books where once you stuck a picture, you stuck it for ever (and you ruin it if you try to remove it), in the computer, you can keep on removing or adding / editing picture. Infact, the software detects smiles and faces or crooked photos...it suggests you what could be done to supposedly 'improve' your content. Word software has spell checks as well as grammatical suggestions. There are templates for portfolios. You just feed in data. Everything is ready where a user has to remain a passive information provider.

Is technology making us dumber? I say that because even after having such facilities, you don't find the physical space improving around you. (Can you imagine your camera not taking a picture unless the subject smiled?). Infact, the inconsistencies that we have in understanding such interfaces increases errors which damage our surroundings. Are we all a dumber race? Prof. Punde had a very interesting observation, where he said that our lives are 'embedded' today. Till a few years back, if you missed a telephone call, you would miss it forever - you would never know who called you. Today, even if you missed it, you have the entire history of that event on your calling machine. If you were listening to a lecture earlier, where if you skipped a word, you lost out the meaning of the sentence, you just ended up misinterpreting it, today, talks are on youtube/internet videos. You can rewind them n number of times and keep listening to one statement until you finally understood it. The idea of revisiting the past, the idea of holding a lot of past and carrying it into the future has drastically affected our whole engagement with time.

How does one see this condition - as a distraction or as an opportunity? Information is piling up, the whole world is in your palm, you know who is where all the time, you can control a person in America from India, working hours have changed, communication ways have changed....as teachers, how do you intervene with their world of technology? (well, I  have asked Prof. Punde to write a formal paper on this).

But technology is very considerate. It doesn't back-answer you / question you back at all! It allows you to do tremendous mistakes and takes all the balme on itself. (the computer would crash if you mishandled it. You are not affected by this physically in any way). It remains within the physicality of a dumb machine. Could you possibly impersonate a machine? A machine's attitude is what we have around - an emotionless, insensitive and dumb race. Are they mistaking machines as their role models? Since machines never make mistakes. Ever listened to a person from a call centre? They talk like machines - "Good morning sir, I am calling from ICICI bank, would you be interested in a loan?" - all in one breath, maximum 2 seconds to finish all that talking. They answer you like dumb people, there is never an emotion in their voice - they are just simulated.

As a teacher, I find it extremely troubling to adjust with this newness. I am uncomfortable, sometimes scared. Because I feel responsible. And my idealism is rooted in a space and time which is completely different from today's generation. Is it this feeling that makes you aloof, alone and single? Is it history's safe space that makes me interested in it? I hope interesting debates come up. I could have written a lot more here, but i realize that this will require a larger body to discuss and detail.

Alternative Histories

If at the end of Second year in an architecture course, one doesn't know

that pointed arches do have keystones
who is B V Doshi
that its Frank Lloyd Wright and not Frank Llord Wright
you can not pronounce Antonio Gaudi
the significance of Vitruvian man
Le Corbusier's Modular theory
that Le Corb's Mill Owners' Association is in Ahmedabad, which is in India and not abroad
that Le Corb designed Chandigarh and not Jaipur
that Egyptian pyramids have 4 sides and not 3
that Gallerie des Machines is a Gallery for Machines (the name is the function)
that Triumphal Arches were for the triumph of the Emperors (answer hidden in the question)
that Kanchanjunga is in Peddar Road and not in Colaba and is designed by Charles Correa
that IIM was designed by Louis Kahn
that IIMA is in Ahmedabad; IIMB in Bangalore
that Le Corbusier means "The Crow" and his name is Charles-Édouard Jeanneret
that Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da Vinci (having seen the film Da Vinci Code)
that the column beam structure of the Parthenon is called Trabeated system
that the St. Peter's square is an oval (after showing the picture)
that Charles Correa is the last one to be amongst the pioneers of Modern Architecture
that "Less is More" was the statement by Mies Van Der Rohe
that the prime contribution of Romans to our social space is democracy
that Mosques have no idols
that Renaissance was before Industrial Revolution / Modernism
that Eiffel Tower has no vertical but inclined lifts
that escalators are conceptually 'lifts'that iron was discovered and not invented!

then

what does one actually know for one's future  architectural practice?

No, it's not to laugh. It's the reflection of the interest level. In an age of media, where one has access to information 24x7, we see students killing all their time on facebook! But one can even share these facts and discussions on FB! Perhaps, our fundamental perceptions of FB do not match. But FB is killing the age of 12-25. Atleast the others know how to use it! and how much to use it. But it's not only FB. The whole of Internet.

Media has restructured the whole of society. I dont know what it would do to the average architectural practice? Are we just supposed to "learn from them" finding out newer patterns of the market? Its rubbish - what is the content in it - there is not intellectual thought. Should meaninglessness be always proven through a rubbish physical manifest? Our engagements with technology are so half-ripe. At least the developed countries use it right from their birth. We have a condition where such access is not even available to everyone. Weird conditions that the current dynamics of space and time has created. Where children struggle with language, basic spellings (the don't even care for them), what do they really want to do? Are they lost? then why don't they express that they are lost? how will they resolve it? why dont they speak up? what is their problem? I am worried about my place and my space which they could possibly ruin with ugly meaningless monsters! I hope the next three years open them up with their true goals!


(all responses from History VIVA at AOA)

Desires

Heart's earnest desire is always fulfilled.

-Mahatma Gandhi